Page 97 of This I Know
“Avery,” I say, coming up to her and trying to keep my voice calm.
Avery stops what she’s doing and looks down. Mara gives me an evil look.
“Can I talk to you?”
“Please leave me alone,” she answers weakly. She must be taking this hard, too.
“She said no, Ethan,” Mara speaks up.
I bend down so I’m speaking in Avery’s ear. “Avery, please. Can I just talk to you for a minute? In private?”
Mara begins to stand. “Ethan–”
“It’s okay,” Avery says to her. She lifts herself with her arms against the top of the table, swinging her feet carefully over the bench. “I’ll be right back.”
Mara remains standing.
As Avery walks away with me, she says, “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” but the tone in her voice is one oflet’s get this over with.
We find a quiet place in the same hallway I once led her down to warn her about Julia.
She stops and faces me. “Here is fine,” she says.
I sigh. “You’re still mad.”
“You noticed.”
“Will you let me ask why? It’s not like I can help who my dad is.”
Her mouth drops open. “Why?You seriously have to ask me that? Because you didn’t tell me, that’s why. You kept it from me. You kept a big, bad secret between us that’s destroyed everything I wanted and everything we could have been. You kept the worst kind of secret, Ethan, and I may not know much about successful relationships, but I do know that kind of shit doesn’t fly.”
Well, at least she said my name again.
“Besides,” she continues, “how am I supposed to know that at the end of the day, you’re not him? That you won’tbecomehim?”
“You’re not, and you can’t.”
“That’s right. I can’t. So? Why did you bring me here?”
I work myself up. I can do this. “Honesty,” I begin. “You’re right. Honesty is important. You want honesty?”
A terrified look falls over her. “No,” she says seriously.
She’s deathly afraid of what else I might have to say.
“You want all of it, so here it is –Iwas the one who sat by your hospital bed, Avery.Ileft you the pressed azalia. It was me. I found you in my dad’s paperwork and I had to see you for myself. And you know what? I’m sorry, but I don’t regret it for one second. Because seeing you for the first time in that hospital room was the moment I started loving you.”
Tears flow down her cheeks.
And I can tell she’s back there, to that animalistic place of trauma and fear, because her reaction is to run.
She runs, and I don’t have time to be surprised at her sudden decision. I follow her path until I reach the door she fled through, the same door we once left to hug in the parking lot, the door that is still shudders with the movement of her passing through in a fury. I place my hand on the cold metal to push it open, then pause to peer out the tiny square window. I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of her.
Sure enough, she’s still out there, running away with a grace I never thought possible after everything that she went through. It proves that her grace doesn’t lie only in her body and her movements and the way that she looks; it’s through and through her.
Her leg must be completely healed. I exhale a sigh from deep within, a sigh that I never thought possible for myself.
But I notice something else that shocks me: it’s raining.
